The Echo Answer
Aria Okoro had sent the same message for three hundred and forty-seven days.
The transmission array hummed around her, filling the cramped relay station with white noise and the smell of overworked electronics. She adjusted the gain on the primary antenna, checked the power levels one more time, then keyed the broadcast.
“Relay Seven to Outpost Meridian. We have supplies. Medical support available. Please respond.”
Static answered. It always did.
She logged the transmission in her daily report: Day 347, no contact. The log file had grown long enough to make the station’s aging computer struggle with the memory load. Hundreds of identical entries, stretching back nearly a year.
Meridian had gone silent during Year 8. A Vethrak harvester had passed within two light-hours of their position, and the settlement had shut down every active system to avoid detection. Standard procedure. The harvester moved on after six days.
Meridian never came back online.
Fleet Command had written them off after four months. Two thousand colonists, gone. The official report cited “probable complete loss of life due to equipment failure during enforced blackout protocols.”
Aria had read the report. She had filed it in the station’s archive.
Then she kept transmitting.
The shift clock blinked to 0400 hours. Six more hours until Davi arrived for the day rotation. She stood, stretched, felt her spine pop in three places. Too many hours in the acceleration chair. Too many days alone with the static.
She moved to the galley, such as it was. A food printer, a water reclaimer, and a heating element that worked when it felt charitable. Coffee would help. She queued a ration pack for breakfast, waited for the printer to finish, then carried the steaming cup back to her station.
The static had changed.
Aria froze halfway to her chair. The white noise had rhythm now. A pattern. She set the cup down hard, sloshing hot coffee across the console, and lunged for the controls.
“Repeat transmission. Boost signal. Route to primary.”
The computer complied. The static resolved into something almost like words. Almost.
Aria’s hands flew across the interface. She pulled up the signal processing suite, applied filters, stripped out interference. The pattern sharpened. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“…elay Seven… Outpost Meridian… hear you…”
“Meridian!” Aria’s voice cracked. She cleared her throat, tried again. “Meridian, this is Relay Seven. Confirm identity. Please confirm.”
The response came faster this time, clearer.
“Relay Seven, Meridian actual. Identity confirmed. Authorization: Theta-Seven-Nine-Kappa.” A pause. “We thought everyone had forgotten us.”
Aria felt tears tracking down her face. She didn’t care. “Meridian, we have you. Fleet Command is standing by. What is your status?”
“Critical but stable. We had a cascade failure in our primary transmitter. Took us ten months to fabricate replacement components. Population at seventeen hundred, down from original count. We need medical supplies, food synthesis feedstock, and reactor coolant.”
Seventeen hundred. Five hundred fewer than the original count. Five hundred dead.
Seventeen hundred alive.
“Copy that, Meridian. I’m flagging Fleet Command now. Help is coming.” Aria’s fingers danced across the controls, opening priority channels, routing the contact report to every ship within fold range. “Stay on this frequency. Don’t go dark again.”
“Understood, Relay Seven. We’re not going anywhere.” Another pause. “Thank you for not giving up on us.”
Aria wiped her eyes, managed something like a smile. “Day three hundred and forty-eight. Someone had to keep calling.”
Author’s Note: This story takes place in Year 10, two years before the events of The Exodus Rush. By this point in the timeline, humanity has survived the worst of the Vethrak invasion and is slowly beginning to reconnect isolated settlements and rebuild communication networks. Stories like Aria’s happened across dozens of relay stations, each one representing a small victory in humanity’s fight to piece itself back together.
If you enjoyed this story, you can follow the main story arc in The Exodus Rush, the first book in The Vethrak Requiem series.